#Mirrorball has my heart with full context

[ladyamanda123]

So putting all of this into a performance art context…..we’ve been speculating that Taylor is reenacting the original 1989-Rep Eras. Watching the last two days as the media are turning on her it’s really driving it home.

This woman will rise and rise and rise, succeed, dominate, find insane fame and fortune and the world just can’t deal with it……so she becomes annoying, too loud, too in your face, too full of herself, etc etc etc.

I came across Megyn Kelly reacting to it all. To be fair I thought she made a couple fair points and handled it better than a lot of media I’m seeing commenting on it. But the entire thing screamed out call backs to that string of media clips we see in Miss Americana before Taylor vanishes. The world loves you….until they don’t…..they cheer you on…..until you succeed and then they ask you to quietly go away.

I just watched her talking about Mirrorball on Longpond yesterday and felt it so clearly lays out what happens to her and to others in the game spotlight.

So much of what is happening is tracking for her to be going off into hiding again.

This reenactment

You’re Losing Me - a final warning to the world

Reputation TV waiting in the wings

TS11 - A story in 11 parts

The Eras Tour (potential goodbye tour)

After the insanity of everything this year, it seems she really is gearing up to leave the spotlight again. Maybe quietly to just go be with her love/family we all imagine she has out of the spotlight. Quiet happiness. Or maybe she’s gearing up the goodbye anticipating a planned coming out will yank her career as she’s probably always been told and she’s readying herself for it. If this is the end then go big, make a statement, lay it all out and show that it’s not changing so she’s just going to walk away.

I hope she will always create. Her mind is amazing, her art is balm to the soul, and she’s given sooooo much joy to the world….but at the cost of herself.

If it means she could go live and be happy and have love on her terms I could have peace in that for sure. But it shatters my heart that the world may lose her shimmer because they can’t accept her and always eventually yank her down off the pedestal they hoisted her up on. Society rose her up just to push her off the peak.

[alexturntable]

Ok so from that interview do we gain any more insight into what Mirrorball means? Is he saying it's like fragments (the way a it's made up of lots of tiny mirrors). So self reflection or the mirrorball is a song? It's too early and I'm short circuiting!

I’ve been thinking about this since I re-read that interview. Here is the full quote for context:

"I always wanted to use the word ‘Colorama’ in a song ever since I saw Antonioni’s Blow Up. It was an unplugged neon light at the back of my mind for years. Some lyrics are declarations of love or hate written in blood or carved in a bus stop, in need of little or no melodic illumination. Some, I believe, are there almost entirely to facilitate it. If I ever thought about it at all I’m sure I used to think the melody was the vessel that carried the lyrics but more recently it has occurred to me that the opposite is often true.

The problem with the neon sign analogy is that neon signs are invariably bolted to the wall and full of gas. Melody seems as though its poured rather than sprayed and doesn’t feel as though whatever holds it ought to be fixed to anything.

I sometimes imagine each word to be made using a three dimensional open-top glass alphabet. Each letter built to harness and transport the mirror ball liquid marble of the melody. When the ‘substance’ fills up the syllables they seem to shimmer and become weightless. With the addition of close harmony I see colours swirl together, parts of the lyrics glow and the way in which they float suggests that something like the ‘star gate’ sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey is happening deep inside them out of view.”

So in this neon light analogy the letters are like containers made of glass which are meant to transport the melody. The melody is a "mirror ball liquid marble". Mirror balls reflect lights directed at them in all directions and liquid marble would create this effect of colours swirling together which when put together would look something like the star gate sequence he mentions. So I guess what we can understand from this is that in this analogy the mirror ball is part of the substance that represents the melody which fills the lyrics.

In There'd better be a Mirrorball, he may mean that he hopes that there will be "melodic illumination" or music accompanying this separation he's describing. After listening to Body Paint I feel like Mirrorball could also be a self-refelction song, probably the whole album. So maybe the "relationship" he seems to be ending is actually his relationship with the current persona he's been putting on that he's moving on from to start the process of writing a new album. That's why he starts with "don't get emotional that ain't like you". Maybe it was easier in the past to get rid of a persona but as he gets older it's more difficult to do so. "Yesterday's still leaking through the roof / that's nothing new" some parts of the previous persona are still present but it's always been this way. "I know I promised this is what I wouldn't do / somehow giving it the old romantic fool / seems to better suit the mood" he never wanted to write gooey songs or direct, staright-forward lyrics but now maybe he is.

"So if you wanna walk me to the car / you oughta know I'll have a heavy heart / so can we please be absolutely sure / that there's a mirrorball?" If the old persona wants to walk him to The Car, meaning the new album, he will be sad about parting with the old one so he wants to be really sure that this it's worth it, that there is a really good melody / song to use for this new era. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that this could be the same mirror ball metaphor he had in mind when he made that analogy in 2016 and this is how I would interpret it but it could also be a complete coincidence that he had used that word before. Either way it's fascinating to read the words he uses, his brain will never seize to amaze me.

[itspileofgoodthings]

Folklore Reactions

(part 2)

I love the whole album straight through but this is really one of my favorite, favorite stretches of it.

mirrorball

when I first heard this song I only caught the bridge and was caught off guard and off balance by it. it’s stunning, brutal self-reflection in the best Taylor mode and based on it I assumed it was about fame. But my little sister and then Emma, along with time, have made me see how MUCH this is a love song. the more I listen to it, the less it hurts me. Even its sharper edges. Because it isn’t about pain or even about being a relentless people-pleaser and performer, though traces of both qualities are in it. It’s about the other person. folklore is the first time that Taylor steps away from her own narrative to tell other people’s but what I’ve always loved about her is that alongside the “me” there is always a “you”, even when the “you” is being blamed or scolded. in mirrorball the “i” figures prominently. she is being her most dazzling, most “Too Much” self here. spinning in my HIGHEST heels, standing on TALLEST tiptoes. there is no sense of being scaled back or modulated for the fact that “no one is around”. In fact she unfolds more and more as the song goes on, ramping up how far and how fast she will keep spinning and twirling and performing, truly pulling out every trick she has even when the entire circus/disco/dance floor is packed up and called it quits. But the Other Person, the You of the song, is the reason for all of it, the only audience that really matters. “Shining just for you.” “To get you laughing at me.” “To keep you looking at me.” It’s full of love —and yes, full of the desire to be loved and seen and admired, the desire to impress, but it’s that generosity of love and giving, and the wanting to give, that keeps it so soft because it gives that desire to perform and to please context and a place to be kept safe. There is an implicit understanding in this song that the Other Person is keeping her steady even as she chooses to keep unfolding and performing—and that he delights in all of it.

seven

seven is a song that takes a memory, one you almost don’t even remember but that’s a part of your bones and your body as much as your brain and your heart anyway, and creates a new, beautiful space for it to live in. these are the memories we all have that usually we don’t talk about, because why would we? No one can understand, we can’t explain, we can’t remember the details, “I can’t recall your face”, and it doesn’t matter because you can’t reconstruct what it was or get back in touch. It’s so right that this is the first song that explicitly mentions folk songs because this is a memory that Taylor wants us to remember with her, to hold for her almost. In this song she gives the almost nameless feeling of childhood love and friendship a form and a home where it can live forever. The love lasts so long. Also the details in this song, the way she perfectly captures the little girl view of the world, playful and adventurous not in a “cute” way, but in a strange and feral way, in a solemn and utterly serious way. “I think you should come live with me.” “Pack your dolls and a sweater.” These are SERIOUS suggestions the same way that “cross my heart won’t tell no other” is a serious promise. The same way that Pennsylvania underneath them was really and truly their world entire. This is a precious song; I’m so glad it exists.

august

the thing I love about this song is the SPACE. in beautiful contrast to cardigan which is weighed down with details and images and specifics august feels almost empty—full of nothing but a single and fading feeling. and that’s so right because cardigan mourns a relationship that was, august one that could never be. “cause you weren’t mine to lose.” cardigan is a more heartrending, aching song but the loose, golden emptiness of august almost hurts more. the grief of cardigan is recompensed by clarity and distance and wisdom; august-girl floats in a sea of loss too big and too empty to even name. her joy at its height was never the fullness of a reciprocated relationship but the one single moment in the car. (notice how she keeps replaying and returning to that one moment?) it never turned into anything real and later in the album it is dismissed as “just a summer thing.” But it’s real to her and as a result so is her golden, hazy sorrow as she watches it slip away into a memory, into—truly—one single moment in time. And even if James doesn’t get it and Betty never knows or understands, she matters.

this is me trying

I love this song so much???? It feels like the inside of Taylor’s heart shared in such a new, exciting way!!! She sounds so tired and sincere and sweet and also !!!!!! I’m not sure this will make sense but it feels like a song about the exact moment that Joe fell in love with her? I don’t know how she conveys that when she’s the one talking about her own internal narrative and feelings but she does manage to make you see him listening to her and loving her.

Maybe it’s the way she sings it—it feels confessional, it feels trusting, it feels like she’s able to say it all, even the darkest bits, because she trusts that he’ll be able to take it. Pouring my heart out to a stranger—yes, that’s it. And this stranger is there to catch her.

illicit affairs

oh man, there is TOO much to say about this song. it is, as cate said, a perfect song that tells the truth about its difficult subject matter with compassion and searing honesty and devastating accuracy. it’s too complete and self-enclosed and does everything it needs to do. what can I say? nothing. except that I’m obsessed with the way Taylor groups illicit affairs, clandestine meetings, and stolen stares all together. At first glance there definitely seems to be differences between them (and there ARE!) but everything she says about actual illicit (torid, awful) affairs is true about something as seemingly innocent as a stolen stare. it shows its truth one single time but it lies, and it lies, and it lies a million little times. there is nothing IN a stolen stare except the twisted promise of the affair which reveals itself to be nothing but betrayal. there is no good in it beyond the literal moment of connection. in order to preserve it you have to let it go. this is an UNBELIEVABLE SONG.